Quotes by Lord George Nathaniel Curzon, British Foreign Secretary, Regarding the Establishment of the Palestine Mandate, March 1920.

“… development of a self-governing Commonwealth’. Surely most dangerous. It is an euphemism for a Jewish State, the very thing they accepted and that we disallow…”

“The Zionists are after a Jewish State with the Arabs as hewers of wood and drawers of water.”

“So are many British sympathisers with the Zionists.”

“Whether you use the word Commonwealth or State that is what it will be taken to mean.”

“That is not my view. I want the Arabs to have a chance and I don’t want a Hebrew State.”

“I have no idea how far the case has been given away to the Zionists. If not I would prefer ‘self-governing institutions’. I have never been consulted as to this Mandate at an earlier stage, nor do I know from what negotiations it springs or on what undertakings it is based … I think the entire concept wrong.”

“Here is a country with 580,000 Arabs and 30,000 or is it 60,000 Jews (by no means all Zionists). Acting upon the noble principles of self-determination and ending with a splendid appeal to the League of Nations, we then proceed to draw up a document which … is an avowed constitution for a Jewish State. Even the poor Arabs are only allowed to look through the keyhole as a non-Jewish community.”